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Women work without a break for their families, society, and friends all through the year. So, on IWD 2016, LEAD conducted their 3rd annual "Recognizing the Unrecognized", where women in our society who are rarely recognized but are responsible for important work were recognized for their contributions, such as cleaning railway stations, bus stands, picking household trash, selling vegetables etc. LEAD and LEADers believe that, without these women, our communities would come to a standstill.

The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. To that purpose, the LEaders Accelerating Development (LEAD) Program of the Deshpande Foundation was born. LEAD develops innovative and entrepreneurial thinking within college students by exposing them to social issues, encouraging them to volunteer their time and effort into the community, and igniting their latent talent to come up with creative solutions. Through this unique platform provided by LEAD, students are gaining the skills and confidence needed to transform their visions into realities. Armed with guidance, exposure, networking opportunities, financial assistance, and encouragement from LEAD, students from throughout 75 colleges and 14 districts are unleashing their leadership potential to go on inspiring and improving those around them.

The 6th Yuva Summit, an international youth conference on leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship hosted by the Leaders Accelerating Development program, began in Hubballi on 6th February with Mr. Ravindranath Gumaste, Managing Director of Kirloskar Ferrous Industries Ltd., cutting the ceremonial ribbon that let the hundreds of attendees, including students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and honoured guests, into the event grounds.

On 24th January, 107 promising students from across Karnataka and neighbouring states descended upon the VTU campus in Belagavi to mark the kick-off of the 5th annual LEAD Prayana. These students, along with 32 beginning their journey on the same day in Nizamabad, were selected from a pool of almost 500 applicants. LEAD Prayana, which began in 2012 with just 63 students, is an annual leadership journey that takes almost 150 passionate students between the ages of 18-26 throughout India on a 14-day tour across Karnataka...

I am passionate about science, especially physics. My affair with Science started during my childhood and it deepened in my high school when I started participating in Science exhibitions with my models. During Pre University Education, I built the Levitation Train with few of my friends and grabbed prizes at several competitions. “Physics of the Impossible” by Michio Kaku was a book that exposed me further to the vastness of the science and motivated me to start a science group called “Blackbody Science Group (Which Absorbs All Wavelength of Intuitive Minds)”. This group engages in creating interest about science among government and physically disabled school children.

“Technology should be utilized to better society, not to harm the environment.”

Failures are stepping stones to success. I tried hard to improve the attitude of myself and those I am surrounded by towards education by teaching my friends at home at Koppal. I succeed partially, and that was my first step in my leadership. Then, I realized the mindset that “work builds, charity destroys”, a philosophy adopted by Baba Amte, which mentioned in his biography. He said that 3 "D"’s are necessary for success: Dedication, Determination, and Devotion. This resonated with me and drove me to adopt this philosophy in my life.

I heard about LEAD from my friends in my 1st year BE. I already had an idea to better society, but I needed a platform to implement it. When I started my "project" I didn't know what that it meant exactly. I asked Geeta Hegde, who explained everything about LEAD projects, and encouraged me a great deal to start up what would later be called the “Ground water recharge system.” My idea was inspired by the Ramon Magsaysay award winner Rajendra Singh, a well known water conservationist from Rajasthan who is commonly known as the "water man of India." His organization has been recognized for its success in revitalizing rivers, renewing groundwater supplies, and granting access to clean water to people who formerly had no access by making check Dams.

All civilizations have flourished on river beds, and water resource is of utmost importance for all living beings. If we don’t conserve the available resources such as rain water, lakes and ponds properly, the water will flow and mix with pollutants and turns to unusable and non- recyclable waste water. To reduce this, we have taken up a project of proper utilization of rain water for the welfare of the society. This is a small effort from our team towards a larger goal.

For this project we sought technical assistance from Sikandar Meeranayak, CEO and founder of SRDS (Sankalpa Rural Development Society). We planned a rain water harvesting and ground water recharge method, and conducted a bore-well water recharge in the Hallikeri village near Annigeri Dharwad. Our project has helped provide water for 12 acres of land and intern increases the crop yielding slowly. We built a 2,00,000 litre capacity reservoir to collect rain water coming from various regions of their field, and a filter system around the bore well to filter rain water into Mr.Ashoka Madalli's farm. The filtered water goes into the casing pipe of the bore well through slits which, in turn, increases the ground water level of that region.

To build this system, we first raised Rs 27,525 and invested Rs 26,782. Next, our team worked in the field with labourers, day and night, relying on a great deal of man power, agricultural machinery, and the like. We also created an awareness program for 30 farmers in Hallikeri and other villages about the conservation of ground water. Many other farmers have approached us because they are also interested in what we are doing and what the project means for them. For this project, I was awarded Best LEader award in Yuva Summit-2014.

And one funny thing i would like to share with you is that while everyone was crazed about bikes in college, I sold my old bike in exchange for a bicycle, due to the large pollutants my bike was producing.

In my second project, I surveyed more than 30 villages surrounding Hubli-Dharwad, and documented their water levels for SRDS.

Through LEAD, I also learned to be an entrepreneur in my college. Our team designed an oxygen and nitrogen cylinder carrier, with investment of Rs.4000, and sold it to KIMS Hubli at a price of Rs.7000 at the PUPA event, which was held by our college under CTE (Centre for technical entrepreneur) and conducted many events in my college.